Lightroom Classic CC 8.1 Build 1200465 uses all the available RAM

After the latest update of my Lightroom Classic CC I literally can ́t work with it anymore!

After a few minutes Lightroom occupies most of my computers RAM. I have a Windows 10 Pro with 16GB of RAM. Lightroom uses constantly over 12GB and slows down the whole computer.

It only uses between 15 and 25% of CPU in the same time.

My CPU is a Intel Xeon E5-1650v2

The Lightroom Catalog, Cache Files and Previews are all located on a (only for this purpose designated) SSD with 256GB. The original image files are on a local SATA drive with 3TB. GPU support is deactivated in the LR settings, because it is not a very fast GPU.

Why is Lightroom so slow and WHY is it using soooo much RAM??

By the way: Dear Adobe - I don ́t know if any of your employees reads this post... but I am VERY UPSET about the fact, that I pay 145 Euro a year for the photographers abonnement but I even are NOT allowed to contact a real support team with my issue! Thats ridiculous!

Yes, I have another email-address as Adobe-Account. Is it possible to send you the address via PN or sth like this?

Support did NOT say they couldn ́t help me, because I was not able / not allowed to contact them! Weh I try to navigate through the Adobe page to the support and there I naviagte to error correction, I only have the opportunity to post a message to the community forum. There is NO email support, NO chat support NO telephone support for me available!

My guess is you chose Lightroom (perpetual product) rather than Creative Cloud > Lightroom, from the list of products. If you choose Creative Cloud, then Lightroom it should give you right options (circled in red) once you drill down through the self help options:

If you still see the rampant ram usage and slower behavior after performing this install, then reset your preference file. A Preference File will survive a Lightroom uninstall/reinstall. Sometimes weird behavior is corrected/cured by resetting the preferences.

Reset Procedure:

1. Close Lightroom.2. Hold down [Alt/Opt]+[Shift] while restarting Lightroom. 3. Overwrite the Preferences when prompted by the dialog.4. Close Lightroom.5. Restart Lightroom.

I did everything exactly as you told me.Sadly the RAM usage is not getting better. LR uses 14GB of RAM in IDLE. I do not make any task in LR, just LR is open, no other app, only my catalog loaded, but memory is at its max.

But it didn ́t.Now it seems that the memory usage sometime falls down to a normal value (about 3-5 GB), but after a few seconds after such drop, it again raises to 13GB and slows down the whole computer.

More good information thank you. Let's create a copy of your catalog and see if it misbehaves as well

On Computer, Open Catalog

Select “All Photos Collection”(Library Module – Catalog Panel)

Select All [Cmd]+[A]

Right Click on first photo and select from context menu Stacking>Unstack.

Select All again [Cmd]+[A]

File>Export as Catalog...

Save as: TemporaryTestCatalog.LRCAT

Where: Desktop so you can find it quickly

UnCheck ☑︎ Export Negative Files.

Now, double click this catalog (it should still point to your original images). Let it sit for 20 minutes or so and then close Lightroom. Wait a few minutes and then reopen Lightroom (still on the test catalog) and watch the memory usage.